


No Man Is An Island

by AuralQueer



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Do Not Archive (The Magnus Archives), Gun Violence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 07:32:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19168660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuralQueer/pseuds/AuralQueer
Summary: Bad Things Happen Bingo prompt: Muzzled. Originally posted on tumblr.On an island in the middle of the sea, Peter Lukas prepares to destroy the world. Martin Blackwood is helping.On his knees, the Archivist watches.





	No Man Is An Island

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Blueberryshortcake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blueberryshortcake/gifts).



“Is the - is that thing really necessary?” Martin sounds upset as he walks into the room and sees Jon, bound, on his knees and muzzled. The thing digs into his jaw and the back of his head, fastened so tight that the buckle digs into his skull, and the metal around the grid at the front cuts into his cheeks. Jon’s eyes sting. 

Because Martin can’t be here. Martin can’t be part of this. He just can’t. There is nothing in Jon’s brain that has prepared him to see Martin Blackwood enter this room and do…Nothing, except wring his hands and look at Peter Lukas with an expression of mild annoyance. 

“You know how he is, pet.” Peter says, as if he’s discussing the weather. He’s busying himself with something: some tome that brings with it the chill of winter wherever it goes. Peter is not apparently perturbed by it. To the contrary, he seems rather absorbed. He doesn’t bother looking at Martin, who’s standing at a point equidistant between himself and Jon, apparently frozen to the spot. 

“Yes, but, it’s…” Martin trails off. He keeps wringing his hands. He looks at Jon, and his eyes are blue and green and bright, and Jon can’t breathe. He tries to move his jaw, just to flex it, just to dismiss the ache. He’s not sure how long he’s been here but he knows the damn muzzle has long since crossed the threshold of uncomfortable and moved into the area of outright painful. The muzzle doesn’t give. Instead, Jon flexes his hands against the rope grinding the bones of his wrists together behind his back and tries not to think about the long-term effects of limited circulation. 

Peter, apparently, has noticed Martin’s hesitation, because he finally looks up from the book in his hands. They’re in a church, on an island, though Jon isn’t sure where. Whenever he tries to know, his brain comes up fuzzy and painful and he flinches away before he can finish the thought. The place smells of brine and the sea, and he can hear the ocean crashing against not so distant cliffs. There are names on the wall: people lost, to storms and drowning. It’s cold, and there’s a thick white fog swirling through the aisles as if the church were flooded already. 

Jon is quite certain that no one is coming for him. They are entirely alone. 

Peter moves to Martin, and curls one hand around the back of his neck, as if he were a puppy. So close to one another, the difference between them is stark. Where Peter is powerful, broad and angular, all muscle built through a life of violence and the sea, Martin gives. He’s soft, and curving, and gentle. And he doesn’t pull away when Peter touches him. “We’ve talked about this, darling. The Archivist needs to be restrained.” 

Jon watches Martin’s throat as he swallows. He glances back at Jon, again, through the corner of his eyes. Peter’s fingers tighten on his neck, crushing the downy curls there. “Y-yeah, I know. I just. It’s. Did you have to do it like this?”

Peter looks amused, his wrinkles white where they’ve been hidden from the sun amidst his weather-beaten face. “Would you prefer I drugged him and had done with it?”

Martin says nothing, and Jon feels something like ice water trickle down his spine as he understands what the silence means, and he isn’t sure if the knowledge is from his god or all the years he’d spent learning how to care for the man in front of him. Peter chuckles, and claps Martin’s shoulder with his other hand, letting go of his neck. 

“There’s too much of the Web about you, you know that? You’d rather have us all lined up and looking pretty than ever get your hands dirty. Mother of Puppets indeed.” Peter’s voice bounces off the high grey stone walls of the church. 

Martin turns away from Jon, and Jon tries not to feel as if his heart has been violently scooped out of his chest. “That’s not true and you know it. I’m here, aren’t I?” Martin’s voice wavers, and Jon has no idea what to make of it. He thought he knew this man once. He thought he understood him. Now he feels as if he’s looking at a stranger. He almost wishes that he was. It would hurt so very much less than the familiar, curving lines of the man in front him. (The man he thought he - well, it didn’t matter now, did it?)

Peter has the book in his hands again, and the church is getting colder. Jon can feel goose bumps rising on his skin, and he doesn’t think that he’s imagining the sound of the sea getting louder. Closer. 

“That you are, pet. That you are. But you forget - the Archivist isn’t just conveniently miserable.” Peter crosses the church in a handful of strides, long legs easily eating up the chipped flagstones until he’s standing above Jon, a cruel sneer on his chapped lips. He meets Jon’s eyes, and his gaze is as unyielding as a great empty sky. “This? This is a  _statement_.” Then Peter snaps the book shut, and backhands Jon hard across the face.

The muzzle digs into his cheeks, and it’s nothing to the slamming, stinging heat of the blow itself. Jon makes a muffled cry, unable to open his mouth beneath the muzzle, and sways away from Peter’s hand. He doesn’t catch what Martin says, but he hears his voice, high and loud in the empty church. 

Jon sits up, eyes stinging, to see Martin’s hands on Peter’s arm. Peter isn’t quite looking at Martin, but Jon can see the line of his face in profile, carved into a fury deeper and less human than any sculptor had ever captured in their dreams of demons. As quickly as it appears, it’s gone, and Peter speaks calmly and quietly. “Martin? What’s wrong?”

“You don’t need to do that.” Martin’s voice is shaking, but firm, and he doesn’t let go of Peter’s arm. Jon isn’t sure if he’d seen the murder in Peter’s eyes, but he doesn’t back down, even when Peter lifts his free hand and closes it around Martin’s throat. 

And Jon knows that he’s a damn fool, and it’s too little too late, and he’s been betrayed anyway. He knows that he should be taking advantage of this opportunity to try and stand: to ignore the numbness in his legs and run, as fast as he could, anywhere else. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck and the goose bumps running down his spine are screaming at him to leave, somehow, as fast as he can. To escape the natural disaster that some animal part of his brain knows is about to crash down on them like a boot on an ant. 

But he shouts, muffled, through his muzzle. Jon ignores the humiliation of how thoroughly he’s been neutered, and he screams, feeling the tingle of it on his lips and the ache in his chest, until Peter Lukas turns, slowly, to look back at him, hand still tight around Martin’s neck.

For a moment the three of them are frozen like that, in a tableau of suspended violence. 

And then Martin looks at Jon, and his breath catches, and several things happen very quickly. Martin pulls down on Peter’s arm, hard, and the book falls out of his hand. Peter snarls, and moves towards Martin, and Martin ducks out of his way and picks up the book and scrambles out of the church at a sprint. 

Jon stares, and then struggles awkwardly to his feet. His legs are bound but they are at least tied separately to his wrists. He sways and topples onto a pew, grunting at the sting of blood rushing back into his calves. But he keeps moving, ignoring the spit pooling in the bottom of the muzzle and pressing against his chin. He heads for the door, slowly at first, hobbling. 

Outside, there’s a great, terrible roar at Peter Lukas shouts something, presumably at Martin, that’s stolen by the wind. There’s an almighty shudder in the air.

Just like that, the magic vanishes. The fog which had been writhing through the aisles stops writhing and simply floats, sinking slowly into the wide cracked flagstones. The sea quietens. The stinging static in the air fades until it’s little more than a cold day. Jon hesitates, and stares. Because whatever Peter had been planning to do, whatever was meant to happen here, it had failed. 

Jon feels something give in his chest. He still doubts that he’s going to survive this. But it’s good to know that the world will outlive him. 

Jon gets to the open dark oak door, and the wind whistles through it, sharp as a knife and kissing cold. Jon pauses to catch his breath and stare out at the wind-swept grasses of the little island, grown long in their abandonment, forming a green carpet before the mighty grey sea. Jon sucks air through the grates of the muzzle, and squints against the stinging in his eyes, trying to spot Martin and Peter.

He can see neither of them, although there’s a small wooden boat bobbing at the shore, beside a jagged outcrop of grey stone. 

Heaving a breath, Jon begins to shuffle down the gravel path, deciding to try and handle his bindings once he’d gotten to the boat. The further he gets from the church, the more exposed he feels, and he wonders that the Lonely has had so little to do with the Vast. Above him, the sky is an endless, clouded white. In the distance, the sea is dark as old stone, crashing into foaming white rubble as it sways and flows. The grass hisses and sings in the wind. 

Jon has almost reached the boat when a single gunshot shatters the wind-woven air. 

Jon’s heart stutters, and he stops in his tracks, turning back to the little grey stone church and the island he’s nearly left behind. His feet hurt, and his ankles are burning. His back aches and his cheeks sting. But he stops, and he looks, desperately, trying to see anything beyond what there is in front of him, feeling panic pull his heart into a gallop in his chest. 

Out of options, with the boat slapping against the shallow water mere metres away, Jon braces himself and  _Looks_. 

There’s a fuzz of static that burns against his mind, and Jon can’t stop the whimper that escapes him, muffled by the muzzle pressed to his mouth. But he pushes through it. At first there’s just blood. The grey of Peter’s hair. Red stains on the grass. The book, sinking, ruined into the sea.

Jon doesn’t notice himself folding to his knees. He keeps pushing. There’s a flash of Martin’s curls, gold and flecked with crimson. Jon’s body is shaking, and he doesn’t care, he can’t care. He needs to do this. Jon breathes quickly through his nose and doesn’t think he’s imagining the hot damp of blood trickling from his ears. He knows he isn’t imagining the metal and salt taste of blood running down from his nose and pooling in the metal bracket around his mouth. 

There’s a gun, black and metal. A bullet casing, forgotten in the grass, lost now to time and the sand. Birds, flying panicked into the sky, frightened by the noise.

Then suddenly there are hands on him, shaking him, and Jon is wrenched back from the eye in his mind to his body with a violent lurch and a whimper. Martin is staring at him. His face is white, and his curls are pulled into a mess by the wind. There’s blood on the soft curve of his cheeks, and in his hair, and on his hands. Jon can’t process what he’s seeing. 

Because this is Martin. Martin who made the tea. Martin who sat and listened, patiently, whilst Jon blustered and blistered in a misguided attempt at asserting his authority. Martin, who believed him, despite everything. Martin who never thought he was guilty. His friend. 

A stranger’s blood had no place on a man like Martin Blackwood.

“-Jon? Jon, can you hear me?” Martin’s voice is high and too loud. Jon stares at him, and after a moment he gathers his wits enough to nod. 

The shape of Martin’s body changes, softening into the more familiar curving lines Jon would know anywhere. He swallows again, and nods. “I’ve. Peter is. I think he’s incapacitated.” Martin takes a quick breath, and a high sound comes with it. He stares at Jon, and his eyes keep falling to the muzzle. An ugly metal thing stained by now with spit and blood. 

( “You know what we do with dogs like you, Archivist? Disobedient mutts that can’t keep their mouth shut?” Peter Lukas had said, pulling Jon’s hair, hard, as he leaned in close. “We shut them for you.”

Jon had shouted, and shaken, and fought. It hadn’t made much difference.)

Martin’s chest jumps and falls as he breathes. There are tear tracks on his cheeks, and more spill over now. “I’m so sorry Jon. I didn’t. You have to believe me. I didn’t know.”

He’s telling the truth. Jon knows it as easily as he knows that the earth spins and the sun sets. He wants to speak and is moving his jaw before he remembers his predicament, the plastic and metal of the muzzle pinching into his cheeks. Jon jerks at his wrists, still tied behind his back, and glances down at the thing on his face, hoping his meaning is clear. 

Martin understands. He makes a soft sound of comprehension, and then he’s leaning forwards, and his fingers fumble in his panic, and he pulls a little too tight for a moment on the strap and it squeezes Jon’s head, but then there’s the blessed relief of the tension around his face easing, and Jon leans forward, shaking his head and half trying to hide the mess that has been made of the lower half of his face as he works his jaw. 

Martin moves to the ropes at Jon’s wrist, and for a moment they scratch at his skin as Martin cuts through them with a pen knife. And then his hands are free, and Jon is moving them back to the front of his body and his shoulders crack and burn as he does, and he doesn’t care. He lifts his hands to his face, and pulls up his shirt with stiff, shaking fingers to wipe his mouth and chin. Martin says nothing, freeing his ankles. 

For a moment, the two of them are quiet, Jon rubbing at his numb skin, ignoring the chafing and bleeding and scratches on his wrists and legs, massaging his aching jaw. When he feels able to speak, Jon looks up at Martin, sitting on the grass in front of him. “I thought you were with him. That you’d.” Jon swallows. “I suppose I thought you’d betrayed me. Us. All, all of us.”

Martin’s lips tremble, and he looks at Jon, and he shakes his head. The wind cries singing over the sea.

“No. Never.” 


End file.
